(credit: DerekVelasquez)
Just weeks ago, Led Zeppelin defeated a Los Angeles federal copyright infringement lawsuit claiming the opening to the 1971 classic "Stairway to Heaven" was a rip-off of the 1968 instrumental song "Taurus." The suit was brought in 2014 by the estate of Randy Wolfe, who wrote the song for his band Spirit. Wolfe (aka Randy California) died in 1997.
Now nearly three weeks after the verdict, Zeppelin's lawyers are seeking almost $800,000 in costs and legal fees for their troubles. In American law, it's usually up to each side of a lawsuit to pay their own legal fees and court costs. But that's not always true when it comes to copyright law. And the Supreme Court on June 16 provided nuanced guidance to lower courts in determining whether the prevailing party in a copyright lawsuit should be awarded attorney fees. That ruling is likely to make it easier for winners in copyright cases to collect fees from the losing side.
In the "Stairway to Heaven" case, the lawyers said (PDF) in court documents that the suit should not have been brought in the first place. Zeppelin's lawyers claim the suit amounted to "nearly half-century-old claims that neither Randy Wolfe nor the owner of the allegedly-infringed copyright ever bothered to assert." Zep's attorney, Peter Anderson, added that the Wolfe trust "tried to tar 'Stairway to Heaven' and its authors, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant."
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